Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!decwrl!sgi!brendan@illyria.wpd.sgi.com
From: brendan@illyria.wpd.sgi.com (Brendan Eich)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
Subject: Re: PI Problems
Message-ID: <51649@sgi.sgi.com>
Date: 23 Feb 90 22:34:32 GMT
References: <9002220905.aa28986@VAT.BRL.MIL>
Sender: brendan@illyria.wpd.sgi.com
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc., Mountain View, CA
Lines: 29

In article <9002220905.aa28986@VAT.BRL.MIL>, jra@BRL.MIL ("John R. Anderson", VLD/ASB) writes:
> 	1. The other day, I changed the net addresses on our PI's, and
> at the same time I happened to place a notice to the user's in /etc/motd.
> Afterwards, "rcp" no longer worked correctly. I spent considerable time
> checking and rechecking the addresses on all the machines. It was very
> strange that I could do "rlogin", but not "rcp".  Finally, I removed the
> notice from "/etc/motd", and amazingly, "rcp" started workin again.
> Imagine how frustrated one must be for "rcp doesn't work, so I'll empty
> /etc/motd" to seem reasonable.  My question is: How can I post a notice
> to users of a PI without breaking "rcp"???

The BSD rcp protocol is fragile: as the friendly manual page says in its
BUGS section:

     [Rcp is] confused by any output generated by commands in a .login,
     .profile, or .cshrc file on the remote host.

The problem is not having a non-empty /etc/motd on the remote host, but
the fact that the remote user's .profile or .cshrc file cats /etc/motd
(the above-quoted warning about .login is erroneous -- the remote half of
rcp uses does not involve a login shell, so .login is not sourced).

Csh users can cat motd-like files from their .login files.  But users of
any shell shouldn't need to cat /etc/motd, as /etc/profile and /etc/cshrc
do so for all login shells upon startup.

Brendan Eich
Silicon Graphics, Inc.
brendan@sgi.com